Keepin touch

Whether you have a question, comment, suggestion or any problem in the purview of the government, send us your message and we will try to respond as soon as possible. If your problem is not in our purview, we will forward your message to the relevant institution.

The Government of the Republic of Serbia

In the service of citizens

Serbia committed to constructive continuation of talks with Pristina

Belgrade/New York, 20 November 2013

Prime Minister Ivica Dacic stated last night in New York that Serbia is firmly committed to an active and constructive continuation of talks with Pristina at all levels and to the implementation of the agreements reached so far, and that it expects Pristina to make additional efforts to that end.

Author: un.org

Addressing the representatives of the UN Security Council member states at a session dedicated to the situation in Kosovo-Metohija, Dacic said that the Community of Serbian municipalities will be formed not owing to the efforts of the interim institutions of self-government in Kosovo, but despite them.

He explained that Pristina did not bother to create a favourable climate, and often not even the basic conditions for the Serbs to go to the local elections in Kosovo-Metohija on 3 November.

In such an atmosphere, it was not easy to lobby for the elections, and much less go to them. But despite all this, the Serbian government is extremely pleased with the fact that more than 45,000 voters voted in the Serbian municipalities, the Prime Minister of Serbia underlined.

According to him, even though Serbia’s senior officials have often been prohibited from coming to Kosovo-Metohija, Serbia still managed to motivate the Serbs in the province to vote in the local elections.

Dacic appealed to Pristina and international actors to provide conditions for the second round of local elections in the municipalities with Serbian majority so that the gross violation of election procedures, as the one in the 3 November elections, would not be repeated.

Once more we condemn harshly the violence in Kosovska Mitrovica that led to the re-run of the first round, and we underline Belgrade’s decisiveness to help as much as it can to bring the perpetrators to justice, Dacic stated.

He expressed satisfaction over the success of the re-run of the first round of elections in northern Kosovska Mitrovica, which took place without any incidents.

Still, it has remained unclear why the OSCE requested that the counting of votes be done outside Kosovska Mitrovica, in a community populated by ethnic Albanians, when there was no reason for that.

According to him, although all the details of the pre-election process had been arranged very precisely in Brussels, on the eve of the voting it was necessary to hold another meeting in order to go through the already established list of conditions once more, due to the fact that in the meantime Pristina did not fulfil almost any of them.

He recalled that Pristina had not prepared the status neutral voting materials, that member of the Central Election Commission in Kosovo-Metohija from the Serbian community had not been elected in time, that the majority of IDPs had been virtually prohibited from voting, that the legal framework for facilitating the establishment of the Community of Serbian municipalities had not been drawn up and that the candidates of the Serbian minority had been harassed in different ways.

Dacic voiced his hope that Pristina will refrain from one-sided moves which can harm the further course of dialogue and destabilise the security situation in the province.